January 1, 1925 to December 31, 1950

Francis Lewcock’s article, “Standard of Living in Germany” (1937), stipulates that the average German working man’s life is not as difficult as one might think for the 1930s[1]. During a two week stay in Germany, Lewcock visited the cities of Trier, Mainz, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Bonn, Cologne, and Dusseldorf and their surrounding villages. The purpose of this visit...

August 20th 1937, the tensions are high in Europe as the newly formed Nazi party is gaining traction in Germany and influence in surrounding regions. (Blame Nazis for rupture. (1937, Aug 21)) The Soviets are most annoyed by these new political ties and influence as it is starting to affect their own states such as Czechoslovakia. Many people blamed these rising tensions and split between...

Abner Jordan was interviewed by a member of the Work Projects Administration for a Federal Writer’ Project that was documenting North Carolina slave narratives. Jordan has never left North Carolina since he was born there and agreed to the interview despite being the old age of 95. He discussed his birth with hesitance, claiming that he was “bawn about 1832 in Staggsville, Marse Cameron’s...

On May 23, 1930, School Board Chairman W.H. Godwin told a graduating class “to have some ambition in life, to beware of bad company, obey the laws of the land and in so doing obey the laws of God. Learn to live and act in a way in which people will respect…remembering always that there is a place for skill.” The graduating class he addressed consisted of fifteen youths who attended an Indian...

News stories relating ‘death by accident,’ ‘murder by one of own’ or even an ‘unsolved mystery’ are just too far-fetched to explain the discovery of so many ‘Negro’ bodies found in the swamps or in uninhabited places in 1930. It is inconceivable to think that the white tyrannical press believe that we are fooled by their fabrications about the missing southern ‘Negro’ workers,”...

In December of 1930 a riot arose in the industrial town of Fordlandia in Aveiro, Brazil. Dissatisfied with the American food they were being served in the cafeteria, native Brazilian workers initiated a violent riot that would not be quelled until the Brazilian army intervened and dietary changes were enacted. With workers shouting chants such as “Brazil for Brazilians! Kill all the Americans!”...

Immediately following the Great Depression, the Mayor’s Unemployment Committee (MUC) established a thrift-garden program in Detroit. Between 1931 and 1932, the height of the program, the gardens supplied food and benefits for about 20,000 people. Experienced gardeners would create model gardens for thrift gardeners to follow, who were either welfare clients or those near the verge of dependency. ...

In a 1936 letter to Dr. James H. Dillard, the Charlottesville philanthropist affiliated with the efforts to fund and improve black education in America, Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote of a recent loss of staff on the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History due to the efforts of Anson Phelps Stokes, Thomas Jesse Jones and others. Considered by Woodson as the "promoters of the Negro Encyclopedia,"...

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an editorial titled, “Building Character,” in 1931 informing parents how to discipline their children properly. She argued that discipline was the best way to build character. Children’s ability to reason in society comes from the parents’ enforcement of obedience. Her argument suggests parents are responsible for their child’s development; therefore, they must...